Ancient trees vital to long-term survival of forests, study finds

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Ancient trees help forests adapt in a way that is crucial to their long-term survival, according to new research.

Their genetic resilience is passed onto other plants, which support the ecosystem to withstand environmental changes, the study found.

Scientists said these ancient trees “must be protected” given their importance in forests, as they cannot be replaced for many centuries.

Researchers from the US, Italy and Spain looked at trees that exist between 10 to 20 years longer than the average lifespan and their role within the ecosystem.

They found ancient trees, which made up less than one per cent of a population, “radically change” the diversity and “population fitness” of a forest.

“These life-history ‘lottery’ winners are vital to long-term forest adaptive capacity,” said the study, published in the journal NaturePlants.

One of the researchers, Charles Cannon, said it will become “increasingly difficult” for them to emerge in forests amid a changing climate, which will likely increase mortality rates in trees.

“Once you cut down old and ancient trees, we lose the genetic and physiological legacy that they contain forever, as well as the unique habitat for nature conservation,” the director of The Morton Arboretum’s Centre for Tree Science in the US said.

He said ancient trees “reach far higher ages that bridge environmental cycles that span centuries” and - according to the researchers’ models - substantially broadened “the temporal span of the population’s overall genetic diversity”.

The researchers said while restoring forests and planting new trees was important, it would take centuries for these to develop ancient trees to play to fulfil their crucial role.

Gianluca Piovesan from Tuscia University in Italy, who was one of the authors, said: “This study recalls the urgent need for a global strategy to conserve biodiversity, not only by preserving intact forests, but in particular the small remnant of a few ancient trees that have survived in managed forest landscapes.”